Category Archives: Golden Niche

Team Members: Patrick Lempert, Artur Brodksiy, Syed Raza, Saul Betesh

Weekly Update 12/9 – 12/16

Final Projects, Golden Niche

I have been working on the website, along with patrick to make it presentable. There is now a header with clear categories for visitors to visit. I have also started adding our groups content onto it such as our documentary, pictures, and more. I reuploaded patrick’s videos to youtube to make it easier to view the vidoes and so they could be embedded. Patrick has started adding sections of the research paper.

At the moment it is good enough for a person to view, if they want to during our presentation at macaulay. It just needs some fine adjustments.

Weekly Update 12/2 – 12/9

Final Projects, Golden Niche

This week I went to Prospect Park. It was a pretty cold day, but I decided to try my luck. At first I searched around paths and places where people walked but quickly learned that that is not a good place to search for them. Next I went off paths, into places that most people don’t go. Things of interest were: dark colored soil, large dead logs, and areas that looked undisturbed. I also tried to dig up holes in some areas and look inside places that had holes. When I did find a good looking dead log, I tried to peel the bark and see if there were any invertebrates hiding inside. As a last resort I tried shaking logs to see if anything would scurry out.

Before I knew it, I realized I had dont a full circuit of the park via paths that people dont take. It was frustrating not finding anything, but I learned valuable information about invertebrates because of it. I learned later that during winter, many invertebrates go into hibernation, overwinter as larvae, nymphs, eggs, and pupae, and lastly migrate to other areas. Many burrow deep underground, further explaining why I couldn’t even see any.

The largest irony was in the fact that once I got home, I found at least 7 bites on my body, no doubt from the invertebrates playing hide and seek with me.

 

Project Update: Week of November 24th

Golden Niche

Our group met this past Sunday to collaborate all of our research for the paper and to discuss how the learning strands fit into our project. We bounced ideas off each other on how to create a museum exhibit to present the research we have done. Potential exhibit ideas include having a 2-hour, 4-part exhibit. Each will be a half-hour focusing on a different branch of invertebrates we have researched: insects, earthworms, spiders and pill bugs. Each part will have a lecture to introduce the focus of the exhibit followed by a free-roam period in which students would use worksheet questions to guide them through the exhibit. We will be able to use the worksheets as an assessment of what the students had learned. This idea seems promising and will likely be used in the research paper. Learning strands that apply to our exhibit ideas will be addressed in the research paper.

Weekly Update 11/10 – 11/16

Assignments, Final Projects, Golden Niche

This weekend, I went to Marine Park and found almost no invertebrate wildlife. I stumbled upon one butterfly, but it flew away before I was able to take a picture of it or catch it on video. I also have some video footage of myself digging through soil in search of bugs, but to no avail.

I believe this has to do with the weather getting colder. However, it’s difficult to determine the definite reason that contributes to the ease of spotting invertebrate life. Other factors besides air temperature might be humidity, precipitation, the location of the park, surrounding human activity, and pollution. One would expect that Marine Park’s proximity to the ocean correlates to higher biodiversity, but no such luck today.

Weekly Update 11/3 – 11/9

Assignments, Final Projects, Golden Niche

This week, we went to Prospect Park. Invertebrates were more difficult to find than they were in Central Park.  Finding them took quite a bit of digging, walking and looking around. I got quite a bit of luck as I checked underneath the bark of a dead tree. As soon as I peeled it off, termites scattered, and I found some eggs, snails, and a centipede. Here are some pictures:

Weekly Update 10/27 – 11/2

Final Projects, Golden Niche, Uncategorized

As I researched invertebrates, I found that the scientific definition of the term is any animal that doesn’t possess or develop a vertebral column. Surprisingly, however, “invertebrate” isn’t a category in phylogenetic trees, which are taxonomic classifications of all Earth’s organisms. The categories are:

Domain –> Kingdom –> Phylum –> Class –> Order –> Family –> Genus –> Species

To get to the invertebrate classification, you would look in the  domain, “Eukarya.” Within that domain, there exists a kingdom called, “Animalia.” This kingdom has many phylums, none of which are named “invertebrates,” but many of them contain invertebrates. Therefore, invertebrates are any organism within the animalia kingdom without a spine. These can include not only insects, but crabs, worms, jellyfish, mollusks, starfish, spiders, and countless other organisms.

Because we don’t have scuba equipment, the majority of our studies encompass land invertebrates.

As we walked through Central Park, we found it very easy to locate invertebrates, especially insects. The ground was very damp that day, and insects were abundant. Plenty of ants crawled across the ground. Ants were the easiest invertebrate to spot. Other invertebrates scurried away quickly as we exposed them and were difficult to capture. They naturally learned to have an aversion to humans.

I usually don’t remember encountering this many insects as I walk through parks. I wonder if this is because I take them for granted and don’t pay attention to them, or maybe this has something to do with the wet environment. According to the wisdom of Google, ants and termites are easy to spot because they like to come out after rain in order to dig down in soft soil to plant their eggs. Especially termites, which like to lay eggs in underground nests and wall interiors. Many air-breathing organisms, including earthworms, come up to surface during the rain when their natural habitat gets flooded.

My next trip will be to Prospect Park, and I’m curious whether it will lead to as successful of a find as this trip did.